Butt welding device for metal strips



June 21, 1938. E. B. HUDSON 2,121,665

BUTT WELDING DEVICE FOR METAL STRIPS Filed April 1, 1936 4 Sheets-Sheet l I N VE NTO R. EDWIN .B. HUD-$0M www ATTORNEYS.

4 Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTOR EDW/N .5. Hanson ATTORNEYS.

June 21, 1938. E. B. HUDSON BUTT WELDING DEVICE FOR METAL STRIPS Filed April 1, 1936 Julie 21,1938. EEH D 2,121,665

BUTT WELDING DEVICE'FOR METAL STRIPS k Q III o n O N N \m x N NN a; I

INVENTOR.

Eawuv .B. Huaso/v.

ATTORN EYS0 June 21, 1938. E. B. HUDSON 2,121,665

BUTT WELDING DEVICE FOR METAL STRIPS Filed April l, 1936 4 Sheets-Sheet 4 INVENTOR. [aw/1v B Huasozv.

BY V

V ATTORNEYS.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFEQE BUTT WELDING DEVICE FOR METAL STRIPS Edwin E. Hudson, Middletown, Ohio, assignor to The American Rolling Mill Ccmpany, Middletown, Ohio, a corporation of Ohio Application April 1, 1936, Serial No. 72,129

3 Claims. (Cl. 219-4) My invention relates to mechanism for weldgauging means having the rapid and automatic ing metal strip or sheets to form a larger or a function of distributing in the proper Way any continuous supply thereof for rolling or other opdifferences in widths of the two strip ends. erations. I shall describe my invention in an These and other objects of my invention, which 5 exemplary embodiment having to do with elecwill be set forth hereinafter or will be apparent 5 tric butt welding machines particularly adapted to one skilled in the art upon reading these for welding commercial hot rolled strip end to specifications, I accomplish by that certain conend to form much larger coils than are available struction and arrangement of parts of which I from the hot strip mills, the coils to be used for shall now describe the aforesaid exemplary emfurther reduction in gauge on a continuous cold bodiment, reference being had to the accompany- 10 reduction mill or on a reversible cold mill, driven ing drawings, in which:

or undriven, and having tight coilers or other F r 1 is a p n vi w f a w n ma hi pulling devices on each side. Long coils, or in embodying my inventionsome operations, a continuous supply of the metal 2 is a p t a end a t o a V ew Of the become desirable in that the mills can be operated a e, at the fi ad d- 15 at a higher surface speed, and with higher ten- Fig. 3 is a sectional view at the center line of sion in the strip being rolled With long coils, the machine, the section being taken along the also, fewer threading operations are required per lines o F unit Weight of the metal being rolled, Fig. 4 is a partial sectional view of the operat- Types of electric butt Welding devices now s mechanism f he n ser. the se tion 20 available are capable of welding hot rolled strip being taken o g the lines of or the like end to end satisfactorily for the pur- It W be tood, Of Cou se. that for t e pose described, the actual welding taking only butt Welding of Sheets or Strip the ends W be from five to twelve seconds. But in the use of sheared along Straight lines, perpendicular to the these machines a great deal more time is spent eXiS Of the strip or sheet if it is without camber, 25 in properly positioning the strip ends for welding 01" if camber is present, along a line that is radial than in the actual welding operation. It fret0 the Camhers can as y and pos tive y quently happens that the widths of the ends of be accomplished y mechanism ShOWIl in y the strip are not the same, wherefore it becomes pending application for Letters a e t en t ed 30 necessary to position the strip ends carefully so Automatic Shear gauges for C ed St p, Ser l 30 that half the excess width of the wide end lies on 15333, filed April 11th, 1935- each side of the narrow end. Again it is neces- In 1 0f the drawings of s ase. I have sary to space the ends of the strip at the welding Shown the ends 0f tWO Stripe, l and 2, Which are edge a definite distance apart t provide th to be welded together to form a large coil or a proper electrical gap for ti and t proper continuous supply of metal for further reduction relation of the welding gap to the push-up stroke by cold rolling. In th s OW t S p is of the welder in order to insure the upsetting of Slightly Wider than the Strip t iS desirable, the weld. as has been indicated above that the strips be An object of my invention is t provide means so aligned that their center lines coincide, and whereby the end of th trip may be rapidly that half the excess width of the wider strip be 40 and accurately positioned in the proper relation distributed on each Side of the narrower Strip, to each other immediately before welding. It is that the distance between the sheared e ds o therefore an object of my invention to reduce the the Strip be parallel and a ta t distance time required for this operation, which now takes apart To these ends, I provide Side gauging from five t eight ti as long as t Welding means which operate simultaneously in from 45 peration itself, A further object of my invenboth sides on the edges of the strip, so that strip tion is to provide accurate means for assuring portions, irrespective of their Width, will be parallelism f th t d of t t to he Weldaligned with their center lines in coincidence. ed, and an accurate spacing thereof in View of the I also Provide end gauging means adapted to 5 stroke of the welding machine, as well as rapidly tend between the sheared ends of the sheet or acting means for moving the end gauging means strip material to assure parallelism and spacing from between the edges when the strips have of the cut ends; and I also provide means for been clamped, and for insuring that the gauging rotating these end gauging devices out of the Way means do not interfere with the stroke of the after the strip ends have been clamped, and for welder. Again it is my object to provide side moving the end gauging means longitudinally of 55 the aligned strips so as not to interfere with the shearing stroke.

It will be understood that in welding machines of the type of the embodiment here described there are two insulated heads or sections mounted upon a suitable base, one at least of the heads being movable toward or away from the other. Provision is made in each head for clamping the end of a strip or sheet. A source of low voltage, high amperage electric current is provided, such as a transformer or generator; and provision is made for connecting the terminals of this source respectively to the sheet ends. Finally, means are provided for moving the sections toward each other so as to bring the ends of the strips or sheets against each other, whereupon welding takes place under the conditions of high heat electrically developed. Since this much is old in the art in machines of this type, my drawings illustrate only such parts of the machines as at present known as are necessary to illustrate the correlation of my novel structure and the operation of my invention.

As shown most clearly in Fig. 3, there is a stationary head or section of the machine indicated generally at H], and a movable head 9, the movable head being shown in retracted position in the solid lines. I have not shown the mounting of these members, nor the means, usually a fluid cylinder, for producing relative movement, or for shifting the movable member toward the other one for bringing the ends of the strips together during the welding operation. I have, however, shown in Fig. 2 the tie rods IS with respect to which one or both of the members 53 and ID are slidably mounted, and from which one or both of the members may be insulated. These rods, or equivalent means, serve to guide the relative movements of the members, and may, if desired, be employed to transmit the moving force to one of them.

Referring again to Fig. 3, each of the members 9 and ID has an electrode member or 6 fixed thereto, insulated therefrom if desired, and serving also as the lower clamping member for holding the sheetedges. These members may be connected respectively by means of flexible lead members 8 and B to the terminals of a transformer T or other suitable source of power. The end of the strip l is clamped in contact with the electrode 5 by means of a clamp or clamps ll, slidably mounted in the head 9 and actuated by suitable motion and pressure means such as the pressure cylinders l2. In a similar way the strip end 2 is clamped in contact with the electrode 6 by clamp members it urged downwardly by the cylinders M.

For gauging the strip ends so as to maintain parallelism and to insure that the shearedends are a fixed distance apart, as indicated at 3 in Fig. 1 at the start of the operation, I provide a series of end gauge members l adapted to lie between the sheet ends in one position. These members are in the form of arms aflixed to shafts it. When the shafts are rotated, the gauge arms may be brought to a position to lie between the strip ends, or to a position to leave the sheet ends free. These shafts are journaled in a sliding and insulated bearing 9' in the head 9; but are threaded into the head H] as at Iii, so that upon rotation of the shafts t6 the arms 4 not only turn out of a position between the strip ends but also move toward the head ill. The purpose of this is to prevent the arms from interfering, in their upraised position, with the movements of the head 9, which, during the welding operation, is moved described to occupy the position shown in dotted lines in Fig. 3 as at 5. For rotation of the several shafts it any suitable means may be provided; but I have found it preferable to provide each shaft with a pinion ll, meshing with the teeth of a rack l8 slidably mounted in the head it The rack is operatively connected with a fluid cylinder i9 by the piston rod 25) as shown in Figs. 1 and l. The stroke of the cylinder is such as to rotate the shafts through an angle of 180 so that the stop members can be caused to move from the position shown in solid lines in the several figures to the position shown in dotted lines at l.

Means are provided for the sidewise alignment of the strip ends, the strips are brought to the machine over the table The provision comprises abutment means. preferably rollers 2 attached to movable brackets and means for enforcing equal and opposite movement of each opposite pair of the rollers or abutments with re spect to the center line of the table. To this end, in the embodiment shown, the brackets for each pair of rollers are fastened respectively to shafts 23 and 24, the one being tubular, and the other fitting into it as shown most clearly in Fig. 2. Both shafts are movable with respect to their appropriate heads 9 and i6, and means are provided to move the shafts equally in opposite directions. A suitable means, though no the only means which may be employed, as will be clear, Comprises a fluid cylinder 25, which, by means of its piston rod moves a lever arm 28 which is pivoted as at to a bracket 21 on the head 59. This lever arm is connected to a bracket 2 1 on the tubular shaft 2 2 by a link and to a bracket 23' on the solid shaft 23 by a link 23. The poin s of connection between the links 25 and 3B are equally spaced on opposite sides of the pivot point 3| of the lever arm 28. Thus as this rocks, the shafts and consequently their rollers 2! move equally in opposite directions. The end of a strip inserted between any opposite pair of the rollers 2! will. he brought to lie with its center 32, when the rollers 2! are moved against the op posite sides of the strip.

In the operation of my device, when the gauge arms 4 are in the position shown in solid lines, the previously sheared ends of the strips are brought against them over the table 372, so that the ends are brought into parallelism and are spaced apart by the thickness of the arms 4. Next the cylinders 25 are actuated, bringing the rollers 2| or other abutment means against the strip edges, whereby the strip ends are aligned with coinciding median lines and whereby any excess width of a wider strip end is distributed equally on each side of the narrower strip end. The correct positioning of the strip ends has now been speedily and accurately accomplished. The cylinders M are next actuated to bring the clamping members against the strip ends to hold them in the heads. Next the cylinder I9 is actuated to cause the gauge arms Hi to swing out of the way. All that remains is the actuation of the heads to bring the strip ends together, apply the current, and effect the weld. By my invention, therefore, the operation of the machine is greatly shortened in time as will be clear.

Modifications may be made in my invention without departing from the spirit thereof.

Having thus described my invention, what I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is:

1. In a welding device, a pair of relatively movable heads, clamping means on said heads for holding material to be welded, a shaft journaled in one of said heads, a spacing gauge arm on said shaft and adapted in one position to lie between the ends of said material to be'welded, means for rotating said shaft so as to bring said arm away from said first mentioned position, and for moving said gauge laterally to avoid contact with said other head during the welding operation.

2. In a Welding device, a pair of relatively movable heads, clamping means on said heads for holding material to be welded, a shaft journaled in one of said heads, a spacing gauge arm on said shaft and adapted in one position to lie between the ends of said material to be welded, means for rotating said shaft so as to bring said arm away from said first mentioned position, said shaft being threaded where journaled in said head, and the bearing being similarly threaded, whereby, when said shaft is rotated, said arm not only rotates, but moves laterally to provide clearance for the relative movement of said heads.

3. In a welding device, a pair of relatively movable heads, each head comprising a lower clamping member serving also as an electrode, upper movable clamping members, means for moving said clamping members into positive contact with sheet-like materials to be welded, a shaft threaded into one of said heads and slidably journaled in the other of said heads, an arm on said shaft adapted in one position thereof to lie between the ends of the material to be welded to space said material prior to clamping, and adapted, upon rotation of said shaft, to move out of said position and also to move laterally to provide clearance for the relative movement of said heads, and means for rotating said shaft.

EDWIN B. HUDSON. 

